Linked by Adam S on Tue 26th Aug 2008 12:40 UTC, submitted by estherschindler
Think you know the truth about Mac OS X Server? Find out as Ryan Faas counts down the top ten commonly held myths about Apple's server platform. Warning: while it's a decent article, it will make you click through 10 pages to get the 10 reasons.
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Member since:
2008-01-20
Actually, turns out it was VERY expensive for a lot of people. On 10.5.0 and 10.5.1 (i think even later), there was a bug, where the software update server redownloaded the data over and over again. There are numerous accounts online of this happening, and it really has ruined a lot of small businesses (in at least one case, it downloaded 300GB, and cost $9000).
And in terms of requiring a specialised skill set, it does. The reality is, almost everything in OSX server is buggy. Maybe they have finally fixed it (10.5.3 was the latest we tried before switching to windows server instead), however, last I heard, the only way most people are actually getting stuff to work properly, is by using third party programs.
Also, the RAID is buggy we found. By pulling out a harddisk from the raid set and putting it back in, weird stuff happened...
My experience is that Leopard server, is NOT server-worthy software. Most school admins I speak to still are too scared to bother trying using Apple's functionality.
To give you an idea of what didn't work when 10.5.0 was released:
- File sharing worked intermittantly
- The Apple fax modem kernel panicked a lot of xserves (so no fax service)
- Open Directory/Kerberos I personally believe was responsible for problems in many cases
- Caldav wouldn't work at all for most people.
- Apple Software update server provided no feedback, and since the network monitor in most cases was broken, every restart downloaded 10GB, and not many people realised until it was too late.
- Netboot rarely worked
- The DNS config tool had serious issues.
It only worked with Apache out of the box.
For businesses out there considering a new server, I strongly advise AGAINST OSX server. Apple has shown that they have no interest in releasing a stable server off the bat, instead preferring to simply ensure it is released in parallel with OSX client.
Evidence of Apple's lack of care for server, is that, 10.5.1 didn't even fix ANY of servers problems, despite the forums being flooded by annoyed admins.
I quit my job over OSX server. I was unwilling to administer a server where we needed 3rd party software to allow anything to work reliably.